Carmel by the Sea Photo by Chris Leipelt — Photo by Chris Leipelt on Unsplash

Bridging Ecological Restoration and Environmental Justice

by Zsofia Adamkovics Larson, Nathan Ling, Sean Marks, Maya Willyard, Maya Lewis Burgess
July 23, 2025

For our Policy Clinic project we worked with the California Coastal Commission examining the relationship between ecological restoration and environmental justice within the coastal zone, and more specifically, how the compensatory mitigation process can be used to advance environmental justice (EJ) in compliance with the Commission’s EJ Policy. When development negatively impacts certain kinds of ecosystems, compensatory mitigation is required to offset these impacts through projects that restore the lost ecological functions and values. This project focused on how compensatory mitigation could advance environmental justice by understanding the three key areas: the policy basis for these requirements, how EJ communities might value mitigation projects, and how mitigation projects have been distributed to EJ communities in the past.

Since its inception, the California Coastal Commission has strived to protect and maintain the state’s coastal environments while maximizing the benefits of public access to the coast, including the ecological services they provide (e.g., provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting services). But are the benefits of ecological restoration being enjoyed by the state’s population equitably? And do they advance environmental justice? As part of the UC Davis Master’s program in Environmental Policy and Management, our team partnered with the Commission to analyze questions like these to better understand the relationships between ecological restoration projects and EJ goals set by the Commission.

The California Coastal Commission got its start as a temporary agency in the early 70s with the passing of Proposition 20, spurred by public concern over rapid, unchecked development of coastal areas that was leading to the loss of public access and environmental destruction. With the passage of the California Coastal Act in 1976 the Commission became a permanent entity which regulates development and enforces land use policies in order to protect, conserve, restore, and enhance the 1,100 plus miles of coast in the state.

Compensatory mitigation projects can occur on-site or off-site at a different location when on-site projects are not possible. Therefore, our project aims to better understand key questions like how these compensatory mitigation projects are geographically distributed relative to disadvantaged communities? Additionally, is there a policy basis in the Coastal Act for including the ecosystem services that humans directly benefit from and any environmental justice implications, in compensatory mitigation project analysis? If so, what ecosystem services might be valued most by environmental justice communities?

To answer all of these questions, our team took a three-pronged approach, creating three different work streams to analyze each aspect. These included a policy analysis, a valuation assessment, and an examination of past practices with a focus on geospatial relationships between impact and mitigation sites.

Policy

In order to analyze policy, we evaluated how the Commission could facilitate more equitable access to healthy ecosystems and their beneficial services in the California coastal zone. More specifically, it aimed to build on the Commission’s commitment to equity by exploring the intersection of compensatory habitat mitigation with environmental justice, and by calling attention to opportunities where the Commission’s work might better support underserved communities across the coast.

Based on the policy analysis, we found that both Chapter 3 of the Coastal Act and the Commission’s Environmental Justice Policy support the ability of the Commission to incorporate consideration of ecosystem services in the compensatory mitigation process and by extension environmental justice. We suggest it may be necessary for the Coastal Commission to develop guidelines around the incorporation of environmental justice and meaningful engagement in the context of compensatory mitigation where feasible, to ensure projects are done with affected communities instead of to them. Additionally, it will be important for the Commission to take advantage of projects with a need for out-of-kind and offsite mitigation, where longer planning forecasts that allow for community engagement regarding land use decisions, and more flexibility regarding the location of mitigation sites can be afforded. For example, transportation and utility projects with a limited right of way in their corridors may not have sufficient space to mitigate on-site, but in mitigating off-site, may locate opportunities to extend the benefits of required ecological mitigation to nearby environmental justice communities at the same time.

Valuation

In order to analyze valuation, we held conversations with community representatives from environmental justice-based organizations to guide our literature review on how access to healthy ecosystems (including their services) is valued. Ecosystem services are the benefits ecosystems provide to people, directly or indirectly. Additionally, we conducted literature reviews to shed light on the EJ value ecosystem services holds. We compared our findings to examples of the Commission's work and identified which values had been taken into consideration or had the opportunity to be further incorporated.

Based on the analysis conducted, key findings show across Environmental Justice communities values include land protection, subsistence, air quality, recreational, cultural, and tribal/indigenous. The Commission can improve their work via equity analysis, stakeholder engagement, and securing additional funding. Although the Commission did show efforts of these recommended points, there is an opportunity to develop guidelines to ensure that EJ community benefits are considered in compensatory mitigation projects.

Past Practices / Mapping

Finally, in order to analyze past practices as authorized by the Commission, a list of projects from 2019-2024 involving the use of off-site habitat mitigation and their geographic coordinates was created. Their locations were mapped and overlaid with CalEnviroScreen 4.0 to evaluate the relationships between each project and mitigation site with respect to different dimensions of environmental justice. CalEnviroScreen is an environmental justice mapping tool that scores each of California’s roughly 8,000 census tracts based on pollution burden and population characteristics, and thus, provides a method for identifying disadvantaged communities.

The key findings in the analysis show past compensatory mitigation authorizations that have ecological impacts have usually been mitigated for at locations within close proximity to the impacted site(s). The analysis also shows that mitigation has occurred in areas with similar environmental burdens and vulnerability as impacted sites, and that restoration efforts are allocated proportionately. Although these findings suggest that the Commission has made adequate EJ considerations in mitigation practices, there are also opportunities to strategically locate off-site compensatory mitigation for the benefit of EJ communities.

We hope our summary report and associated recommendations will aid the Commission in delivering on its mission and demonstrated commitment ‘to protect and enhance California’s coast for present and future generations through its careful planning and regulation of environmentally sustainable development, rigorous use of science, strong public participation, education, and effective intergovernmental coordination’ by facilitating more equitable access to coastal ecosystem services.

L-R: Sean Marks, Maya Willyard, Zsofia Adamkovics Larson, Nathan Ling and Maya Lewis Burgess in front of an EPM background. — L-R: Sean Marks, Maya Willyard, Zsofia Adamkovics Larson, Nathan Ling and Maya Lewis Burgess at the 2025 Environmental Policy Symposium.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the environmental justice organization leaders who took the time to speak with the team in facilitated conversations: Charming Evelyn, from OceanWell and the Sierra Club, and Efraín Chávez Delgado, from Justice Outside.